Saturday, November 11, 2006

msb-0080 Inherent Sence of Justice

msb-0080 An Inherent Sense Of Justice

Feed back comes first so ...

My emails and comments are telling me that people just love MDMHvonPA's Roundup column. (See MDMH, maybe you should be speaking up for yourself. :-)

The link to it is: http://media.libsyn.com/media/msb/msb-0079_Back_for_more....m4a

(By the way, that's the model for running an ad on this show. I just tell you about it and refer you back through the link to actual the media file, which can be any kind of file and as long/large as it needs to be. No more "squeezing" it to fit into a 5 or 10 or 15 or 30 or 60 second spot, according to your advertising budget. You can take the time it needs. :-)

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Now I'm asking you all for feed back.

I'm wondering about what you, my gentle MSers, thought of George Hrab.

Let me know. I've got a few more tunes that I would play by him but I'm wondering if you liked him too. Its your show too since you are the audience (Notice the continuing absence of Country and Western music Miss Chris? :-)

I know most of you liked Erik Kjelland's music. The email's I've been getting have been all good.

Any of you gone to EverybodyFalls.com and bought the album?

Any of you recommended it to anybody else?

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The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting feature in their Friday, November 10, 2006 issue.

Thet had a column, the Science Journal, headlined with "Animals Seem to Have An Inherent Sense Of Fairness and Justice."

Two female capuchin monkeys, "Sammy" and "Bias", seem to behave with a sense of moral obligation towards each other.

In a rigged experiment Sammy got some food but in doing so, deprived Bias from getting to her food. Bias screamed blood hell of course.

Sammy then reached out and helped Bias reel in some food, despite the fact that she wasn't under any contractual obligation to do so.

Sammy did so out of a sense of fairness. It wasn't fair that Sammy's actions in getting food deprived Bias from getting her own food.

That behavior violates the "I Gotta Get Mine and Screw You," kind of actions we observe everywhere around us.

That two capuchin monkeys "got the point" while we, the supposedly more enlightened human beings, would either not see any point to collaboration, or would deliberately choose not to collaborate, puts us humans to shame.

How unlike the comportment we see in business which holds that "Its not enough for me to win, the other guys have to lose."

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Where am I going with this?

We humans put systemantic obstacles in the path to collaboration, cooperation and our own wider goals.

Any help the system gives is given only grudgingly and after the supplicants have somehow managed to jump through all of the hoops the system placed at higher and higher heights and further abased themselves to such a degree, like they've spent everything and have nothing left, that the system just lets some ever diminishing amount of aid issue forth from the collective cloaca.

The people in the system tell themselves that, since they apply the same rules to everybody in our system, they're "being fair", but fail to realize the unnecessariness and unfairness of the entire system in the first place.

Nor do the people in the system recognize that, since its not the only system out there, or even in here, it is unfair to anyone stuck with that particular slice of the health [don't] care system.

For instance, Congress as a great health [don't] care system. But if you're not in congress, and if you're catching this podcast, odds are you aren't, you're mileage may vary, a lot. Like Prius to Hummer a lot.

Any system which is supposed to hand over charity to the needy and has the needy applying suffers from the same systemantic flaw. Those systems are blind from the start, deaf to the pleas of their own constituents and quite dumb.

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This morning, Saturday, November 11th, 2006, on "The Open Mind" on PBS, they had a medical information show.

Our health [don't] care system is a wonder of schizophrenia and systemantics.

Canada, England, Mexico, even Cuba, might have waiting lists for certain treatments, but the United States of America, home of the wonder drugs and the skilled surgeons, has over 50,000,000 uninsured (and therefore on a "Don't bother showing up!" waiting list,) and around 100,000,000 under-insured (and therefore on a "Its not covered by your plan." waiting list.) And that's out of a population of 300,000,000.

1 in 6 Americans has bupkis, (nothing) "fall off the wagon and we'll run you over" coverage.

1 in 3 Americans has tsuris, (aggrevation) "fall of the wagon and we'll let you get back on" coverage.

That means that less than 2 out of 3 Americans has adequate "fall of the wagon and we'll help you get back on" coverage..

And that's only the insurance.

When we try to collect on that insurance, we quickly find out that there are wide disparities between the country side and the sui- uh, city side.

Unless you're in a major urban area which just happens to specialize in your ailment, you're looking at a long, uncomfortable bus trip. (You're sick aint'cha? [Or did you want to get there on your own dime. {Insurance companies only book airplane trips for their own executives.}])

Health care really is health care if you're in the 1% of the population who can afford to pay. For the rest of us, well we're hanging on to that wagon.

While I can rail freely about systemantic flaws, I can only grumble about systemic ones. Geography is geography.

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I've been listening to podcasts of CBC Radio's "Quirks and Quarks," the science show, and the BBC Radio 4, "From Our Own Correspondent". The former is positive and hopeful while the latter is depressing. Make that depressingly cheerful and cheerfully depressing.

I am struck by the almost schizophrenic contrast between the news, and the news.

One podcast was sounding hopeful and optimistic about the vanishing fish stocks (I was reminded of "Soylent Green" and the discovery by Charlton Heston's character of "Robert Thorn" of the report that found that "The oceans are dying!")

while the other podcast was being brutally honest, describing the condition of the road (not roads, road,) into, La Paz.

La Paz is in the bowl of a valley, three miles up, carved out by freeze-thaw cycle erosion, not rain or glaciation, hurled up by tectonic collision and loomed over on all sides by the Andes.

The switch-backs leading down the sides of the bowl are pretty much impassable arroyos, except for a very few suicidally steep roads.

The poor neighborhoods live up the sides of the bowl and there are "no" suburbs because there are these friggin' mountains everywhere and they're all going "up, way up".

11 comments:

mdmhvonpa said...

What I cannot understand is why we don't have a hybrid system of health-care yet. Keep the good-stuff that the company benefit packages offer but also have a state care program ... something like what the government has for their own employees. Hell, we are all paying for that anyways, just open it up to the rest of the folk. Yeah, it's going to cost a lot, everything does. But we need to address this. You want to know the strange thing about this? The folks in the field away from the Urban centers are the ones who really don't complain much about not having services. They are the salt of the earth, go it on your own type. I'm a sprout from that stalk and wonder how 'tough' I could be if I did not live in Metro Philly.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

We have just such a hybrid system (private and state,) but they keep the worst features of both.

The difference between the system in the 'States and everywhere else is that the state comes in after you have run out of every other options and are therefore are at the mercy of the state. (I can tell you what being at the mercy of the state brings you ... summary execution.)

You have to be destitute (and if you deal with the health [don't] care system for any time at all, you will be!)

The 'States is the only political regime which fails to recognize that health is everybody business and that being in good health is in everybody best interest.

Just like the interstate highway system is a publicly funded, excellent system, so should the health care system be a publicly funded, excellent system.

That doesn't mean that there can't be private roads, or toll roads, but that the system for interstate commerce is primarily for the common good and deserves public funding and support.

Think of America without the interstates and you find that you can't because it wouldn't exist.

But think of America without health care and you find yourself here and now.

After all, it only endangering its citizens, and nobody cares about those.

mdmhvonpa said...

You know what is really freaky about the whole Health care System ... it is set up to work against itself. Really, it should be about KEEPING people well instead of treating people after they are stricken ill. It's been postulated a hundred different ways from Sunday, but the Ben had it right over 200 years ago: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

Further to the comment, its a question of where one sets the baseline.

Right now, in the 'States, its being set Ted Kozinsky low.

If you're an American you can expect to live a 8" by 10" log cabin in the woods, just like the Sod Busters did. (That's setting the bar about as low as it can go. The only thing worse was the Taliban during the reign of Mullah Omar.)

If you are expecting more from the state, you're deluding yourself.

Of course, if you're a rolling lump of metal and plastic, hauling tons of lumps of metal and plastic, you have an expensive, well paved system of roads criss crossing the continent.

It harkens back to how much we value human life.

Sadly, some of us value the unborn, and therefore the abstract idea of a human being, far more than those who are already here.

Lets hope the social Darwinists out there don't get their way anymore. (In case you hadn't noticed it, guys, the pool of wealth is getting smaller and deeper. That's never good for the surrounding economic terrain.)

Have Myelin? said...

".....almost schizophrenic contrast between the news, and the news."

Just had to say that jumped off the page.

My 32 year old daughter is now a student, and has no health coverage. It terrifies me, and I seek answers for her. I suspect she has some problems that need addressing (probably minor, but I'm only a doctor by osmosis in the field of neurosis, or neurology)<---- said because most Neuros appear neurotic!

As usual I digress. Good post!

Miss Chris said...

Thanks for keeping the country music absent. You have no idea how much I appreciate it! lol

Anonymous said...

aqbfxofI am writing for advice. Over the past year, I have been searching for someone with MS and, understandably, privacy issues have prevented help from official MS organizations. On the Thursday after Katrina, I was rescued from the bus depot in downtown New Orleans. I should say outside the depot, since we were ordered out of the building by a national guardsman. There was a young couple in the group, Al and his wife. I cannot remember her name. They were airlifted; she was completely non ambulatory, unable to sit up. I had met them on the I-610, in the Gentilly section of the city. Al had arrived asking for someone to help carry his wife to the high area of the interstate. They had been trapped in their sweltering attic, as we had been. If you saw any of the images from that time, you can imagine her immense suffering. It was an experience of terrible extremes and fears. I think about them constantly. If there were someone who could just send them my contact information, I would be very grateful.
Marlene Askew

Anonymous said...

I am writing for advice. Over the past year, I have been searching for someone with MS and, understandably, privacy issues have prevented help from official MS organizations. On the Thursday after Katrina, I was rescued from the bus depot in downtown New Orleans. I should say outside the depot, since we were ordered out of the building by a national guardsman. There was a young couple in the group, Al and his wife. I cannot remember her name. They were airlifted; she was completely non ambulatory, unable to sit up. I had met them on the I-610, in the Gentilly section of the city. Al had arrived asking for someone to help carry his wife to the high area of the interstate. They had been trapped in their sweltering attic, as we had been. If you saw any of the images from that time, you can imagine her immense suffering. It was an experience of terrible extremes and fears. I think about them constantly. If there were someone who could just send them my contact information, I would be very grateful.
Marlene Askew

Charles-A. Rovira said...

Hello Ms. Askew

you needn't worry. Your email address will not be published unless you want it to be. And maybe not even then.

I think you might want to ask someone who is closer and might stand a chance of having met them.

I would like to put you in contact with some who knows the area better than I and is an MSer herself.

She is at http://fridayschild.blogdrive.com post the same request on her blog and see what happens.

As for the MS Society's privacy issues...

I find it quite difficult to believe that their privacy issues would prevent them from acting as intermediaries since they would be in complete control of all information and communications between the couple and the wider world.

However, I find it quite easy to believe that they would not want to expend their resources to do so since, even after more than a year, the situation in New Orleans is still dire.

Look on the bright side, since they were airlifted, you can be sure that they were alive.

And where there is life, there's hope.

I will be leaving your message posting on my blog and podcasting it.

Maybe somebody out there can help...

-Charles-A.

Pete Moring. said...

Here in the UK the NHS has the attitude that there are enough charities out there, go and see them.
We'll diagnose it for you, but after that, you're on your own.

"Just be careful now"

We do seem to have good charitable resources though. So perhaps I shouldn't moan.

Pete.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

As long as the NHS can do that (give a diagnosis) to anyone and everyone, without sending them to the poor-house doing it, I'd say the citizens of Great Britain were better served than we are in the United States.

Health care for profit, unlimited profit, is a gun to the head of our citizenry here.

Lord help you should you stumble and fall sick (and the 'States has no monarchy.)